As elements of New Orleans Bounce music has been slowly drifting outside of its largely southern borders, Big Freedia, also known as Freddie Ross, has become the unofficial ambassador for the genre, making various high profile TV appearances and rather memorable live performances.  Just Be Free is his first true full-length album, and has the polish that could gain new fans, but never strays far from his roots and manages to stay undeniably fun.
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After what almost seemed like a begrudging festival reunion to play Streetcleaner, it was exciting to see that the pieces were coming together for a true Godflesh reunion, and even more so when the likelihood of new material appearing got higher and higher. Unexpectedly announced as a precursor to the upcoming full-length album, Decline & Fall sounds as if it could have been recorded around 1993 through 1995, because it has such archetypical Godflesh sound, which is reassuring to say the least.
Over the span of a far-too-short 20 minutes, Ritual Howls manages to plow through a variety of styles that all rank amongst my favorites, with a lo-fi level of production that would make any "true kvlt" black metal band jealous. Even with all this ugliness, however, the material is more memorable than dissonant and at times leans into true song structures that are more memorable than what similar artists usually do.
On paper, this album seems like a lock for one of the most fun and memorable releases of the year, as Drew Daniel is one of the smartest and most innovative artists currently working in electronic music and he and his talented friends are reinterpreting some of the most spectacularly self-parodying music ever recorded (the album's subtitle is "Electronic Profanations of Black Metal Classics").  The reality, however, is more baffling than anything.  While Heathen certainly boasts a couple of inspired moments, its bulk lies somewhere in an unsatisfying no-man's land between one-note joke, head-scratching pastiche, and weirdly reverent homage.
There has been an unusual amount of excitement about this debut and for good reason: Eric Holm takes a very cool and inspired idea and executes it beautifully.  Culled entirely from contact mic recordings that Holm made from remote telephone poles used by military listening stations in the Arctic Circle, Andøya is an unexpectedly rhythmic and haunting series of meticulously crafted industrial soundscapes that occasionally blur into weird minimalist techno.
Capturing a single performance between these two titans of improvised music, labeling this three-plus hour set as "intense" would be doing it a disservice. Recorded in 1996, after Keiji Haino and Peter Brötzmann had worked together in the studio setting some time prior, so the two artists had some previous interactions to build from. Here augmented by the full Fushitsusha trio of Yasushi Ozawa and Jun Kosugi, it all comes together with a primal intensity few can match, and well up there with the best moments in both artists’ catalogues.
Sutekh Hexen are one of the few artists who successfully transcended that boundary between esoteric black metal and experimental noise without seeming to be also-ran poseurs in an already crowded field.   They also manage to dabble with occult imagery and moods without it coming across as a simple ploy for attention. This most recent release, Monument of Decay reissues an out of print limited LP and cassette from last year with a wider availability and a previously unreleased ten minute bonus piece appended.
Initially released in 1997, three years after Derek Jarman's passing, The Garden Was Full of Metal was a fitting tribute to the legendary director. It also, however, helped to demonstrate that Robin Rimbaud was a musician with a more significant artistry than solely relying on the novelty of presenting covertly recorded wireless phone conversations. Reissued for the 20th anniversary of Jarman's death, with four additional songs from the same sessions, it remains an extremely personal tribute to one artist from another.
This is my first exposure to this Chicago super-duo consisting of Steven Hess (Pan•American/Locrian) and Michael Vallera (COiN), but they have actually existed long enough to record a loosely related trilogy of albums that culminates in this one.  According to Immune, Drown is the "apex of a five-year exploration of image, space, and sound," so I guess it is as good a place to start as any.  I cannot say I have much to note about their image, but I am legitimately impressed with Cleared’s use of both space and sound, as they strongly resemble an improbable convergence of Sunn O))), Cocteau Twins, and Tortoise.  It does not always work entirely seamlessly, but it sure is great when it does.
